Better Late Than Never
by Wyndes
Summary: Mostly completely romantic  and  not-so-very  short  Jo/Zane wishful thinking. I'm calling it T for more than one word, now.  I never had any intention of writing past Chapter 2-I only did because of the nice reviews, so thanks!
1. Chapter 1

Better Late Than Never

Jo was running late. Since Jo was never late—punctuality being one of the virtues that West Point drilled into its cadets—this meant that she was also aggravated.

Of course, even if she hadn't spent too much time pounding the punching bag at her morning workout, she'd still be feeling annoyed. She'd made a decision, a hard, painful decision, but a decision. She'd let go. And then what did Zane have to go and do but kiss her and bring all those feelings boiling to the surface once more? It had meant a restless night of tossing and turning, wishing and missing and rethinking the same thoughts over and over again. And a morning workout twenty minutes longer than usual still didn't serve to stop her brain from revisiting the past.

"You're late."

She stopped in the doorway, and briefly, very briefly, closed her eyes and wished herself anywhere but here. "And you're in my office. What do you want?"

"I want an answer to a question."

She sighed and crossed the room, dropping the file folders she was carrying onto her desk. "I'm not going to tell you anything. I'm not going to answer any questions."

"You know, you really should have changed Grant's last name when you faked his identity. Once Andy let slip that his records were in the archives, it was easy to find out almost everything I wanted to know."

"Zane." Jo placed her palms flat on her desk, and took a deep breath.

"Don't worry, Jo-jo. I'm not going to tell. Not that anyone would be likely to believe me." Zane pushed himself out of the chair. "That is, I'm not going to tell if..." he paused.

She tried to let the silence last, but his eyes were too intent. He was making her stomach churn and not really in a good way. "If what?"

"...you answer one question."

"What is it?"

He took a step closer, and his voice dropped. "Why don't we fit?"

_Why don't we fit? _she wondered. And then realized, of course, they were the words she'd said to him when she was hallucinating.

"Because you're a criminal!" she snapped at him, stepping away.

"Nice try," he smiled and moved even closer. "A month ago, I would have bought that. But one of the felonies I committed this month was at your request. So that doesn't really work anymore. You're not as law-abiding as you've always pretended."

Jo took another step back. He was too close. She was having a tough time thinking. And wasn't that always the problem? From the very beginning, from their very first date, they didn't fit because he was too damn smart, and it made her feel stupid.

Zane followed her, closing in again. "Come on, Jo-jo, you can tell me."

She was still backing up but the wall was behind her. He reached out and with one hand, loosely circled her right wrist, with the other, interlaced his fingers with her left hand. Leaning into her, he almost whispered, "Why don't we fit?"

"Because you never let me forget how much smarter you are," she blurted out, knowing with a part of her that she was talking to the wrong Zane, to a Zane that she didn't really know and that she'd never loved, but with another part of her so grateful to be able to have the conversation that she should have had when he gave her his grandmother's engagement ring.

He pulled his head back, with a blink of surprise, "Really?" Then he chuckled, pinned her arm to the wall over her head, bent his head to hers, and-with his mouth a bare inch away from her skin-breathed into her ear, "Does that mean you let the other me forget that you can kick my ass without breaking a sweat?"

Caught up in the incredible rush of sensation from having his hands on her, it took Jo a couple of seconds to process his words, and then with a choke of a laugh, she twisted, angled her elbow, hooked one foot behind his leg...and with a grunt of exhaled air, he was sitting on the floor, laughing up at her.

"That is so hot."

For a second, she couldn't help grinning back at him, before she got serious . "You got your answer, now get out of my office."

He scrambled to his feet. "In a minute."

He pulled the ring out of his pocket, and held it up where they could both see it. "I've never come close to giving this ring away. I've never even considered it."

He held it out to her. "Put it back on the chain." He wasn't laughing now. His face was as serious as she'd ever seen it.

"I...I don't...I can't," she stumbled over her words, not knowing what to say.

"It's yours, Jo-jo. Someday maybe you'll wear it on your finger. But we should start slower than that." Reaching out, he took her hand, tucked the ring into her fingers, and then brushed his lips lightly against hers. "How about Sunday brunch at Cafe Diem?"


	2. Chapter 2

"Ha."

"What does that mean?"

Jo rolled her eyes. "It means, no. No brunch." She shook her head. "Can't happen. Won't happen."

Zane slid his hand around the back of her neck. "And why is that?" His voice was soft, his eyes intent.

"Because Zoe is...she's my little sister. She's the kid sister I never had. And she has a crush on you, that you..." Jo stopped, overcome by the desire to punch Zane in the face, using every molecule of willpower she had to stop herself from breaking his nose and ruining those pretty boy looks forever (or at least until he paid big bucks for a plastic surgeon.) Deep breath, deep breath.

"She has a crush on you and you have played along with it and I am not going to hurt Zoe because Zoe...Zoe still loves me. And if, in this crazy fricking insane alternate universe that I really truly hate, if I have to pick between hurting someone who loves me and being with someone who doesn't..." Jo paused, biting her lip and looking furtively toward the ceiling. Hell. Her office was recorded, wasn't it? Head of security at the most top-secret installation on the planet-yes, everything that happened in her office was being recorded by the DoD and she'd just been stupid enough to admit the truth on camera.

She looked at Zane and she could see the moment where her realization reached him by the flash in his eyes. "We have to fix that," she mouthed almost soundlessly. "We need to fix this really fast."

He nodded, the most minute gesture of his head, his eyes already gone, glazed with thought as he tried to solve the puzzle of how to delete security footage that probably had a direct feed to the DoD, and then he pulled her closer, bent his head to hers and started kissing her.

Jo kissed him back. It was automatic. It was what happened when someone who smelled and felt and tasted like the love of your life kissed you, you kissed them back. Your mouth opened and your spine melted and your toes curled and before you knew it, your tongue was weaving a complicated dance with theirs and your heart was racing and there wasn't quite enough oxygen in the room.

"Fargo's office," Zane whispered. "Can you get in there?"

"Um, probably," Jo murmured, hands cupping his face.

"We get in there," he whispered, "we use his system to access the security feeds, and we create a loop. Keep kissing me, we need at least five minutes of raw footage."

Jo kept kissing him, but below (she hoped) the level of the cameras, she drew one foot back and kicked him hard in the shins. "Ow," he grunted with pain but only into her mouth. To the cameras, he showed no change in expression. "What was that for?" he demanded in a whisper, sliding his mouth up along her cheek, and tugging gently at her earlobe.

"For being a jackass," she whispered back, before taking his mouth again. Five minutes, she thought furiously? Five minutes? Then let's make them five minutes you will never forget, and with a quick tug, she slid her hand up and under his shirt until she was touching bare skin.


	3. Chapter 3

Wow, what a rush.

The sense of power was intoxicating. After two years together, Jo knew Zane. She knew the soft spot on his neck where a gentle nip could make him moan, she knew the sensitive areas along his ribs where a scrape of even her short fingernails could make him gasp, she knew…well, she knew enough.

It's true that this Zane was different. He obviously worked out more, the muscles in his upper body much more pronounced. And in a hazy part of her mind, she could tell that his practiced hands and lips meant that in the years they hadn't been together, he'd kissed a lot more women, a thought that she didn't want to examine too closely. But in the important ways, he was exactly the same. And she knew enough about him to drive him insane.

It was a heady feeling.

Of course, it was also driving her insane, but that was a small price to pay.

"Lupo, you…" with a gasp, he lifted his head, breathless, arms still holding her tight against him. "Did I ask you to marry me because the sex was amazing?" he asked, voice husky with desire.

"No," a little insulted, Jo pulled away. "I mean, yes, but…I mean, I don't know. I don't know why you…" she shook her head. Taking a deep breath, she pressed her lips together, and closed her eyes, trying to get some control back.

"Moving on," she finally said firmly, slipping out of his reach and heading for the door. "I'll meet you in Fargo's office. Follow me in a few minutes," she glanced back at him, letting her gaze travel up and down him pointedly. "You might want to think—hard —about cold showers."

"There's not enough cold water in the universe, Jo-jo."

* * *

"Send Zane in when he gets here, please, Larry," Jo strode by Larry's desk without pausing and through the door to Fargo's office, closing it firmly behind her.

Fargo looked up from his computer and opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say a word, Jo had her finger to her lips, telling him to be silent. She pointed urgently at her ear and then twirled a finger to indicate the room. Giving a small sigh, Fargo's fingers flew over his keyboard.

"Okay, sonic protocols are up. No one can hear us. What's happened now?"

"I screwed up. Badly. We need to get the security footage from my office deleted before anyone from the DoD has a chance to listen to it."

"Deleted? That's not going to be easy. Your office has a straight feed to the DoD mainframe as backup for any security incident interviews you do."

"Yeah, well, I'm the security incident today. We need to wipe it, or we're all in trouble." Jo took a deep breath. "Zane's on his way."

"Zane? Oh, great," Fargo said with disgust. "What did he do now?"

"This one isn't his fault, Fargo," she shook her head. "It was that stupid hallucination. I said something I shouldn't have and— " she shrugged. "Snowball effect. One piece led to the next. It's my screw-up."

"That means he knows?" Fargo frowned.

"Yeah." Jo looked away, unable to meet Fargo's eyes.

"How much? How bad is it?" Fargo leaned back in his chair, looking worried.

"He's on his way to help us get rid of the evidence, not running straight to Mansfield. But I think he's figured out the whole thing, more or less."

"Is this going to cost me another quantum fluctuation generator? Those things don't grow on trees, you know."

Jo smiled faintly, "I don't think so. I think this one...well, let's just say it's already paid for."

Just then Zane walked in, carrying his laptop. He shook his head at the sight of Fargo. "Weren't we breaking into his office?" he asked Jo, and then continued without waiting for an answer.

"I should have known you were in it with Grant the last time I was here. Asking me to work my awesome illegal skills for you was just plain weird. I figured I owed you one for saving my butt over the Skycruiser, but I should have known right then that something was up, and not just with Grant, with the two of you, too." As he spoke, he flipped open the laptop and jacked it into Fargo's system.

The corner of Fargo's mouth quirked and he looked at Jo, "Hmm, good point. We didn't think twice about asking Zane for help, but we should have." He stood up and waved Zane into his chair. "Make yourself comfortable." Grabbing his tablet, he took a seat on his couch and went back to work.

Zane shook his head again, looking rueful, and said, "I so should have known. The real Fargo—yeah, just would not be saying that." Taking Fargo's seat, he bent to work.

"So does the alternate universe me often do illegal things on your behalf?" Zane asked, eyes intent on his computer, typing furiously.

"The alternate you is honest," Jo said firmly. "You do nothing illegal, you don't get into trouble. You're a good guy."

"Uh, Jo?" Fargo interrupted, looking up. "Wouldn't you say that's a bit of an exaggeration?"

"He is a good guy," Jo insisted.

"Okay, maybe a good guy," said Fargo doubtfully, "Maybe. But with a gift for getting into trouble."

"You're criticizing someone else for having a gift for getting into trouble? You?" Jo was indignant.

"Not criticizing," Fargo put a hand up defensively. "And his gift for getting into trouble might not be quite as well-developed as my own unique skill in that area. But Zane, honest, good, and trouble-free are not words that belong in the same sentence. Not any universe's Zane."

Jo glared at Fargo. A small smile, almost a smirk, played around the corners of Zane's mouth.

"Okay, we've got a problem," he said, suddenly getting serious. "I've got the feed, but it's not just a matter of covering what you said. We've got to get rid of what I said, too, about finding Grant in the archives and…damn, I can't make a loop that'll fix that." He looked up at Jo. "A full deletion is just begging for trouble. I wouldn't be able to get all the files without wiping the drive and there's no way they don't notice that."

Jo stared at Zane. Zane looked back at her. They both glanced at Fargo.

He shrugged.

The room was silent.


	4. Chapter 4

"Can't we just shoot it?" Jo yearned for the days of simpler problems, of being able to pull out one of her favorite guns, wrestle a problem to the ground, and drag it (well, okay, usually him,) off in handcuffs.

"We'd have to break into the Pentagon for that." Zane looked as if he might be considering it.

"The cameras are motion- and sound-sensitive," said Fargo slowly. "They start in response to action, but then they continue running for a few minutes. When you both left the office, the cameras would have kept running."

"If we make a loop of that footage…" Zane got Fargo's meaning immediately and turned back to his laptop. But then he paused and shook his head. "I was waiting in Jo's office for at least half an hour. I can make a loop long enough to cover it, but it's still going to look suspicious. The cameras don't record an empty office for that long."

"We might get away with it," Fargo started to pace. "It could be a glitch in the cameras, or maybe a loud noise nearby setting them off."

"Double-bluff," said Jo suddenly. "Can you mess up the sound on the real footage? Just distort it a little, so the words aren't clear?"

"Sure, but-" Zane shook his head, not understanding what she was suggesting.

"Make the loop of the empty office, and substitute it for the real footage, but leave the garbled video behind. If someone gets suspicious and goes looking, they'll find the video. They'll watch it, think they understand why the cover-up, and either drop it or try to find out who made the switch. I'll get fired but that's better than being sanctioned for time travel."

She started nodding, "It'll work. As long as they can't understand what we're saying, there's no real problem. But if they think they know why the switch was made, they'll stop looking. And let's face it, the this-universe Jo would never want that video to be seen."

Zane started to grin, "Loving the criminal instincts, Jo-jo. You're awfully good at this for someone so straight-edged."

Fargo, eyebrows raised, was looking back and forth between the two of them. "So, what exactly is on the video?" Abruptly he waved his hand, as if erasing the question. "No, no, never mind, I don't want to know."

"They won't fire you, anyway, Jo." Zane's fingers were flying over his keyboard again. "I'll get blamed for it, and you can throw me in jail for a couple of days." He looked up at her and teased, "But you get to keep me company there. It's the least you can do."

"Oh, God," Fargo sat down on the couch again and picked up his tablet. "I'm going to have to watch you two get goopy again, aren't I? It was bad enough the first time."

_Goopy? _Jo and Zane's faces held almost identical expressions of dismay.


End file.
